Bog Myrtle & Peat

There is a goshawk in the wood above the cattle. I have seen her three times in the last week, and now she is all I can think about. I first knew these birds on the open hill, flying as far-sown flecks above heather and white grass. I learned about them from the wreckage of… Continue reading

In dire fettle and foundering, I pushed up through the broken ground to find altitude. This was an act of desperation in a bleak moment; the hill always provides a shift of perspective and leaves me smiling and renewed. I hoped that height would bring clarity, but now the high ground was dark and cloud-bound,… Continue reading

Even since I last wrote, the wee birds have doubled and then doubled again in numbers. I spy all sorts in the harvested field, and now they are joined by dark and sodden woodpigeons which cruise above the fallen crop like plashy rags. A rush of rain battered into the glass windows and made me… Continue reading

We took a ton and a half in the end. This had been my goal from the middle of July, but it was a sore and steady business threshing the oats by hand, and the final few days of labour fairly drove the joy off it. We packed our tall piles of straw into seventy… Continue reading

The moor is groaning with water. I flush a dozen snipe as I walk at last light through mushy pans of moss and grass. They rush away into a chart of stars, and then I am in the woods where the trees are cool and tangy. Here the undergrowth is crackling with thrushes; redwings and… Continue reading

Late silage is a bastard job. Gone are the fine barometric subtleties of haymaking in June. Now is the time for distracted contractors and ham-fisted hurry. The grass is thick and heavy like a fold of sodden fabric, but the goodness is waning and soon the wads of growth will dissolve into juicy soup. We… Continue reading

The wind ripped over the rocks and bore the trees away. Needles birled in the yard, and our grand old pine was pulled to her knees. We are left with splintering shafts of yellow wood and red bark like scabs of rust; the pigs wrestle with the wreckage and munch the bristling tips with gulps… Continue reading

I step out before dawn and find the sky is thick with snipe. They call in the darkness, and the noise comes to me wetly like wellies pulled from mud. Soon I am climbing over dewy gates and up onto the hill, where grouse cackle and blue day begins to leak between gaps in the… Continue reading

The owls have spurned my box. They preferred the cracked chimney of a tall ash tree by the river. Now we hear the youngsters clashing and snoring throughout the night, and the adult birds ferry a stream of flesh into the low boughs. We went to see them by torchlight and found three well-grown children… Continue reading

Chattering steel teeth skimmed through the oats and they fell in a veil like a grey, rustling wave. Rain threatened, and the crop cannot lie on its side when it is wet. It must be bound, so I only cut what I can tie. A single eight foot sweep yields forty sheafs, and it takes… Continue reading